


Taking the Fun Out

by Molly_Hats



Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV First Person, POV Kate Bishop, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 15:36:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14047389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Hats/pseuds/Molly_Hats
Summary: Kate goes to Cassie’s funeral.





	Taking the Fun Out

I’ve been at funerals before. Distant relatives and business partners I didn’t know. With families like mine, no social event’s really about who they say it is, it’s about the deals and connections and posturing. 

Her funeral’s simple, though. I think her parents probably wanted it that way. Maybe they’re holding out some vain hope she’ll be back, and don’t want to wreck her secret identity.

We’re all here, all the living Young Avengers, her parents on opposite sides of the chapel, a handful of kids that knew her from the Initiative a few rows behind us. There are a few people I don’t recognize, maybe Latverians, or family, or other superteens. Maybe even normal teenagers she shared something with--a sports team, a club, a class. 

I try to ignore my dress, the way the designer cut and expensive fabric feel too good on my skin, make me feel alien and wrong. It’s not that kind of funeral, it’s a genuine, heartfelt ceremony--a last team meeting for the Young Avengers--when we say goodbye. It shouldn’t be like this.

It shouldn’t “be” at all.

Eli sits beside me, alternating between a pained slump and military-style straight backed attention. He hasn’t looked me in the eye yet, but maybe he tried and I just missed it. Nobody’s been very eager to make eye contact.

The wind picks up as we head outside. It should be huge, a stormy wind that makes lights flicker and whips leaves off the trees, makes you stand up and take notice and feel swept up in it all, feel out of control but a part of something big and beautiful and dramatic.

It’s not. It’s a light breeze that moves a few of my hairs about a centimeter at best. 

We split up into separate cars for the drive to the cemetery. Her mom and stepdad take a car alone, while the rest of us wordlessly pile into a few large cars. The drive passes in silence. 

The burial itself is rather anticlimactic, which is stupid, because what’s a burial’s climax supposed to be? The body shooting into the air to explode in a display of fireworks? 

I almost whisper that one to Tommy, thinking he’d appreciate it with the sick sense of humor we share, but a glance at him makes me stop. He’s not crying, no, anybody who didn’t know him wouldn’t see anything wrong. But there’s something off, something strange in the way he’s carrying himself. His fingers twitch but he otherwise stays completely still.

After the burial, he takes off immediately for the small forest at the side of the cemetery. I follow after him, since he’s not running at superspeed. Maybe it’s for the sake of his secret identity, or maybe he doesn’t care if I catch up to him. 

“Tommy.”

He slows down, but doesn’t look back at me. His suit, despite being a loan from his identical twin, seems to fit him wrong. He’s too thin, too blond, too something.

Or maybe I just can’t accept my friends as funeral-goers. It feels like a pageant, another opening or party Suse drags me along to, where I smile and act polite because no sense burning bridges over a bad day.

I loosely grip his wrist, stopping him. “Tommy…” I don’t know what to say now. I’m at a total loss. This is strange, wrong. The setting’s familiar and he is too, but they don’t fit together, clashing, a sudden shock in art style: the lovely but uncaring cemetery and my friend, my friend who’s fast and impulsive and always wants to save everyone. The cemetery acts like it cares, but it’s just hunks of rock we’re not coming back to, dirt above and below and everywhere, and Tommy’s here, he doesn’t have feelings, he doesn’t hold hands, but he’s not pulling away, he’s standing too still, I can’t see his face.

I feel like I’m trapped in a dream that I’ve just realized doesn’t make any sense. I’m abruptly keenly aware of the dream logic, and I’m left shaken, hand tightening on his warm arm as I fight back tears.

He turns, finally, and he twists his hand in my loose grip so that it takes mine. He raises a hand to my cheek. “Hawkeye.”

I flinch. “Tommy, I can’t be--we can’t be that anymore. It’s not--”

“So we’re just giving up? Pretending we were never Young Avengers?” 

“Of course not, we’re just finally learning what we should have long ago--”

“I thought you wanted this. Cassie told me you hunted them down, made them let you two join.”

“Yes!” I yell. “I did! And look where it got her!” I fling my arm back at the cemetery, pins and needles running through it at the sudden, aggressive motion. 

“Kate. You couldn’t have stopped her, and that would’ve been wrong.”

“Wrong?!”

“You saved--”

“We didn’t know what we were getting into.”

“Really?” Tommy asks, one eyebrow raised. 

I slowly shift my arm to rest my hand on his, finally meeting his eyes. Slowly, he leans closer, letting go of my other hand to take my other cheek. 

Maybe it’s disrespectful. Making out at a funeral, I have been told, is a serious breach of etiquette. But it’s not like a normal funeral. It’s the Young Avengers. It’s a goodbye to my best friend, my teammate, and probably the team itself. And if there is one thing that years of loveless funerals have taught me, it’s that funerals are for the living, not the dead.

**Author's Note:**

> I have some other character study of Kate after Cassie’s death fics in the works. I have so many feelings and ideas about why Kate is so different in Hawkeye, and I just want to no prize it into place.


End file.
